In one of the startling facts of the Covid infections around the developed worlds of Europe and North America, records from www.worldometer.com, in comparison to the world, it is found that 40 % of global Covid infections, 10.5 million of 24.4 million globally were from Europe and North America, while Europe and North America constitute just 1.3 billion (17%) of the global population of 7.8 billion.
17% of global population accounting for 40% of Covid infections and the rest 83 % of global population accounting for the other 60% of Covid infections, conveys a strong point that, the West has failed, though not miserably, but to a great extent in containing the global pandemic.
This must be what is a clear expression of a successful Covid containment strategy for the rest of the world as compared to Europe and North America. What could have been the reasons for major Covid spread in Europe and North America while it was within manageable limits for the rest 83% of the world population.
The author while researching this found an HBR article (click here) on this topic which stated that some of the Reverse Innovation concepts have been applied by the hospital in Europe and North America in containing Covid. The pressurised Covid testing booth innovation from Yangji hospital in South Korea, negative pressure sanitised booths for the patients while the medical professional without PPE equipment are able to test on the patients, keeping costs low and ensuring high turnover, with this process taking barely few minutes compared to the earlier procedure of sanitising rooms and replacement of PPE, leading to lot of lost time and high costs for testing in Europe and North America.
The successful ways by which African countries were able to contain the spread of the virus by contact tracing and exercising control over these contacts, asking them to go for institutional or home quarantine, helped them use manpower to contain the spread effectively. Europe and North America were in the dark on how to effectively prevent the virus spread.
These were two techniques used effectively by the eastern world to contain the deaths and the spread of the virus which the western world can learn from, that leads us to the concept of Reverse Innovation.
Reverse Innovation, as propounded by Prof. Vijay Govindarajan of the Tuck School of Business, is the origin and spread of low cost, effective innovation from the eastern world to the western world, instead of the other way around, as had been happening over the past couple of centuries starting with the Industrial Revolution from the seventeenth century.
Hope many more reverse innovations will happen this time in the case of the Covid infection and benefit the world as a whole.
Picture courtesy Berger-helmchen.com
George..
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